Tails and Amy Talk Things Out
by DocCrusher
Summary: Not everyone can be as eternally self-confident as Sonic the Hedgehog. And no one knows that better than his oldest and closest friends.


"Hi Tails!"

"Hi!"

"Getting busy on the notebook again?"

"Yep."

"What are you working on this time?"

"Nothing special, just something that I think Sonic will like. It's a few days 'till the anniversary of our friendship, so I want to make a little something for him to honor it. Hope he likes it..."

"You're cute when you're caring for others," Amy Rose teased as she rubbed the fur on her foxboy friend's head.

Tails lightly chuckled. "Well you know me, I like to make things a little better for everyone." He rubbed out a line on his paper before scribbling some more. "You know, some day I hope to be able to make things that benefit the whole world. Big words admittedly, I know I'm just the one kid, but it's a dangerous place out there when you have people like Eggman running around, and I want to do what I can to fight back against all that, and improve things for the innocent. Hopefully that'll be a reality one day, but for now, I'm helping Sonic by making this little device."

"So what will this one be programmed to do?"

"Er... Make chili dogs."

Amy giggled as she rolled her eyes. "Should have known. He loves his chili dogs."

"Indeed he does," Tails said very dryly. "Practically half my rings go to chili dogs per month thanks to him. So if anything this will help _me_ out in the long run as well. Anyway..." He carried on writing and drawing, making all the calculations necessary for such a specific and not particularly revolutionary invention. During which, Amy was looking at some of his other sketches on the table, as she often did whenever she visited Tails' house. As usual, all sorts of machines were displayed in their concept phase. She smiled to herself. She always did admire Tails' intellect, and she was just as thankful as Sonic was that they had such a genius in their group. Especially when they regularly have to fight a very similar genius. But as she looked at each sketch, with all their intricate details and notes, something seemed to distract her. She looked at Tails as he scribbled away.

"Excellent," Tails proclaimed with a grin, eyes fixed on his notebook. "That should be the finishing touch. Sonic's gonna _love_ this. It may be arguably my dumbest idea yet, but if it makes him happy, then who cares."

"Heh, yeah," Amy agreed, but strangely, she didn't sound over the moon about it. Which Tails noticed. He assumed she was just daydreaming about Sonic again as she's prone to do, but he sensed the difference in tone.

"Something wrong?" he asked, as he continued scribbling away.

"No, no... I'm good," she mumbled.

"You sure?" He glanced up at the hedgehog.

"I'm sure." But she clearly wasn't feeling all that good, as evidenced by her uncharacteristically downtrodden tone. Tails noticed that as well, unfortunately for her. He glanced up at her again, and stared long and hard at her, knowing that something was up. He put his notepad and pencil on the table.

"There's something bugging you, isn't there," Tails correctly deduced as he tapped his fingers on the table. Amy said nothing, she just twiddled her fingers and looked at the ground, but that was all the answer that Tails needed. He sat on the bench, and motioned Amy to do the same.

She looked as though she was ready to sit down with him, but she turned away and waved her hand. "It's nothing, it's no big deal. Don't mind me, you have better things to do." She was ready to walk away, but Tails immediately grabbed her hand.

"No, please. You can tell me. What is it?" Tails asked firmly, but gently. "What's the matter? I'm not going to force you to talk, it's your choice and all, but you know I'm ready to listen if you want to. You won't be wasting my time. I _want_ to listen."

She looked at the fox with a look of conflict, and her eyes darted left and right for a bit, but after a few seconds, she slowly sat down on the bench beside him, having decided to unwind after all.

"Well, the thing is, it's... You see..." She glanced to the side, looking rather dejected. "I really want to help Sonic too."

"Eh?" the fox blurted out in surprise. "What are you talking about? You think you're not helpful? Of course you're helpful! You help him out regularly!"

"Do I though? Do I really? With all the times I've made a mess of things?" She paused to run her hand through her left quills. "What does Sonic know me best for? What do _you_ know me best for? Being a brat? Being a pain? Something along those lines for sure."

"But you're not a pain at all," Tails argued, sounding slightly offended that she would even come to this conclusion. "Why are you saying-"

"All my life I've wanted to help my hero when he needs it," Amy interrupted. "But all I've done is distract him, or force him into things that he doesn't want to do. I even got into a fight with him over marriage. A fight! Over him not marrying me! How childish is that? What kind of friend would do something like that?"

Tails said nothing, as his ears slowly drooped and he looked to the side, as though he felt ashamed about something himself.

"Then there's the fact that I'm not that strong or smart," Amy continued, chuckling sadly. "So I don't even get to be cool, like my hero. What would Sonic see in me, when I'm just a girl? Not like you, when you're so smart and you make all those amazing machines. And you never mess up like I do."

"That's not true, Amy..."

"Yes it is," the hedgehog sighed.

"Oh yeah? Well I've got a recollection of a fake emerald incident that says otherwise."

"And it's not just you," she lamented, ignoring his claim. "It's like everyone else has everything. You're really smart, Knuckles is really strong, Shadow is really powerful... what can I possibly do to help my love when I don't have any of that? I've got, what, my hammer? A hammer and a hard head. And they just cause more problems than they solve."

She rested her head in her hands, showing palpable disappointment in herself. For what felt like minutes, neither of them said anything after that, but not because they ran out of things to say. Tails clearly did have something to say, but he seemed to be arguing with himself on whether to go forth or not. He thought back and forth, and back and forth, until finally, he made his decision and went into full gear.

"Did Sonic ever tell you what happened with us on the Lost Hex?" Tails suddenly asked, with a hint of dread.

"No?" Amy replied, raising her head back up in confusion. "What do you mean?"

"You know about most of what happened, yeah? You know that Sonic got there, things went south, Zeti went wild, we teamed up with Eggman, we beat the Zeti, then Eggman when he betrayed us, and that was that. You know all that stuff, right?"

The pink one nodded.

"Well, there was one other thing that happened during that period. Something that I'm not proud of." He sighed to himself as he plucked up the courage to go through with his story.

"When we teamed up with Eggman, it was obvious that he was needed to switch off his own machine, because obviously he knows it better than anyone else, even if this risked the chance of him trying something. However... the idea went into my head that Sonic respected Eggman's engineering more than my own, even though Eggman has been our nemesis for who knows how long. Now that might sound stupid on paper, and it _is_ , and I know we teamed up with Eggman before, but this time was different. It wasn't everyone rounding up to confront the big bad monster. It was just me, Sonic, and him... and his accomplices. And so there was plenty of time for Eggman to be established as Sonic's tech guy, even if only temporary. During all this, I couldn't help but feel..."

"Feel...?" Amy gently ushered him.

"Useless," Tails stated, closing his eyes. "You see Amy, I've been dealing with some confidence issues myself. I never wanted to show it, but the more I saw all these people join Sonic on his quests, it made me think of how insignificant my own skills really were. I didn't hold any _distaste_ against any of these people, I would never dream of that, it wasn't an ego thing. But I'm ashamed to admit I was rather envious of them. Envious of how better they were at assisting my friend." He looked to the side again. "I mean, when you have a whole Light Gaia helping him out, you're just a tiny blip on the map, right?"

"Tails..."

"So when it seemed that even Eggman - our most formidable and persistent enemy - was more helpful than I could hope to be, at my own field no less... I... I kind of snapped. It wasn't immediately, because I tried putting it at the back of my mind at first, but as we were going along through the Lost Hex, it started clouding my mind more and more, until eventually, when we reached Eggman's compound..." He went silent for a bit, as if he was having trouble putting the rest of it into words, before he finally settled on curling his left hand into a fist, and pounding it softly against his flat right hand. "Verbally, that is," he reassured. "Not physically."

Amy simply looked at him in silence. Surprisingly for Tails, she didn't look angry or hurt. All she looked was sympathetic.

"I wasn't thinking straight," he continued. "Issues that had been there for a long time had finally started to surface at the heat of the moment, and it all spilled out into a disaster. I lashed out at Sonic, even though he hadn't done anything wrong. I got competitive with Eggman, even though the situation demanded his skills. I nearly got myself killed even, all to desperately do something useful during this whole thing. I was stupid. Really stupid. And even though Sonic forgave me in the end, and that was the end of that, I still look at that time with nothing but guilt." He slumped ever so slightly on the bench, another obvious sign that he wasn't enjoying the act of highlighting this past incident.

"But... why are you telling me all this?" Amy questioned.

"Because I wanted to show you that you're not alone on how you feel," he said as he put a hand on Amy's left shoulder. "I've made mistakes as well. _Sonic_ has made mistakes as well, and so have the rest of Sonic's friends. But Sonic doesn't hold those mistakes against _them_ , does he?"

"Well, no..."

"He hasn't regarded you as useless or weak, has he?"

"No..."

"And he hasn't demanded that you keep yourself out of his life, has he?"

She shook her head.

"Amy, take it from me, you're not a liability." He grabbed Amy's hands, and looked her in the eye. "You're **not.** You help the rest of us in your own unique way. It doesn't matter if you can't lift cars, or if you can't do quantum mechanics. You don't need to do any of that in order to be a valued friend. And that's what you are, to me anyway. A valued friend. And I'm sure if you asked Cream, she wouldn't even let you finish the question. You're a lot more commendable than you think you are, Amy. All you need to do is to see that for yourself."

After thinking about the fox's words for a few seconds, Amy started nodding. She still looked uncertain, but not as much as she did before. She was coming to terms with what her friend was saying, and she had nothing to argue with. But there was still one thing on her mind, as Tails let go of her hands.

"Can I ask you another question?"

"Sure, go ahead."

"Do you think I'll ever have a chance with Sonic?"

Tails blinked. On one hand, he should have known that the topic was inevitably going to turn to his friend's widely known feelings about his other friend, and whether or not the latter friend reciprocated said feelings. Yet, he wasn't familiar with hearing Amy sound so _unsure_ about it. For as long as he knew, Amy had always been dead-set on getting Sonic to return her feelings, in a variety of grand or wacky ways. This was the first time the fox got the implication that Amy sensed the possibility that it was never going to happen. And that wasn't like her at all. Was this turn of outlook recent? Had she been thinking about this for a while?

Furthermore, why was she asking _him?_ Yes, he was Sonic's best friend, so perhaps Amy deemed it necessary to request a second opinion from the other person who knew Sonic the most, but how was he expected to know for sure?

"I'm not sure why you're asking me that..." he finally responded, after an awkward pause.

"I just wanted your opinion," Amy casually replied, looking at her clasped hands. "You always know what you're talking about."

Tails raised an eyebrow at the compliment, before turning his head away in thought. He rubbed his chin slowly, focusing intently on nothing in particular. This was a tricky one. The query was simple, yet he had no idea how to answer it. And why would he be expected to have an answer to it? Not only was the fox not even remotely close to being an expert on romantic relationships - and not just because of his age (although that _was_ pretty much the biggest reason) - but on top of that, best friend though he may be, he honestly didn't know what Sonic's real stance on the matter was, due to the hedgehog's propensity for not really discussing that sort of thing. Sonic sharing the sentiment all this time but being reluctant to express it was no more or less possible than Sonic having nothing to hide and genuinely not being romantically interested in her. As far as he could see, there wasn't much concrete evidence towards either possibility.

So what should he say? That he didn't know? He couldn't just leave it at that, because his friend deserved better than that. She asked him for an opinion because she valued it, and he wasn't going to give her something that amounted to nothing.

"Look, Amy..." he started, dragging it out so as to continue thinking about what he actually wanted to say. "The thing is..." Frustrated, he settled on saying whatever came to his brain. "...No idea. I've no idea. Sonic has never been the type to be super passionate about romance, you know that as well as I do. In all my years with him, I've never heard anything from him that definitely confirms or denies it. It's a mystery of the ages, and I'm guessing that won't change for a while yet. I know this isn't what you want to hear, but I can't say that Sonic absolutely shares your feelings and wants to hook up with you one day, because I have no idea if that's true or not."

The pink hedgehog continued looking down at her boots, as she nodded softly, silently. She understood.

"But..." Tails started again with a raised finger, shaking it gently. "Whether he cares about you in that way or not, that's not to say that he doesn't care about you _at all._ It's not just me and Cream who value you. You're still Sonic's friend at the end of the day. And a GOOD one at that. Sonic doesn't hate you, you know. He _never_ has. He has loads of respect towards you."

"He... does?" Amy asked, sounding genuinely puzzled.

"Yes," Tails firmly replied, with no hint of doubt whatsoever. "He mentions you all the time. And not in a derogatory way either: he still brings up the time you helped out Cream and Big when their friends went missing."

"Really?"

"Really. He also jokes about the time you mistook him for Shadow."

"Oh, he knew about that...?" Amy muttered, clearly embarrassed.

"No no, he doesn't _mock_ you for it. He just finds it amusing, the same way that he finds cat videos amusing. But anyway, the point is, you have a place in Sonic's circle. I don't know if there's another side to that coin or not, but Sonic has a lot of high praise for you. I'm sure he'd be willing to show you _that_ much. The amount of times he complains about shenanigans is nothing compared to the amount of times he exults you. I know that, because I've heard it for myself. Sonic wouldn't want anything to happen to you, no less than he wouldn't want anything to happen to me."

Another minute-length silence ensued, but this one was a lot less tense. Tails just looked out at the sunset as he let Amy think about it. He waited patiently.

"I guess... I can live with that much," Amy finally said, as she slowly started to smile. "I may want Sonic's love more than ever, but not as much as I want Sonic's _happiness_ more than ever. And if I can do what I can for him, well, that's not too bad, right?" She stood up from the bench, clenching her fists. "So I'm gonna work even harder! I'm gonna sharpen whatever that I can sharpen! And I'm gonna be the best that I can be, not just for him, but for the rest of my friends too! Including you!" She looked back at the fox, still smiling.

"I know you will," Tails assured with a smile, stepping up from the bench himself. "You're already doing a great job. And I know Sonic would agree with me on that."

Amy wasted no time in giving Tails a big and perhaps slightly aggressive hug, which Tails didn't mind, because he always enjoyed her hugs. "Thank you for your help, Tails," she said in his ear, still locking him in her borderline bear hug. "You're so wise for your age, you know that?"

"I seem to get that a lot," Tails chuckled as she let go of him. "Maybe I've been a grown man all along, eh? But is there anything else you want to vent about?"

Amy thought about it, putting a finger to her chin as she turned her eyes to the clouds in the sky. Nothing popped to mind, and she definitely felt a lot more relaxed than when she showed up at the door. "Nah," she said contently. "I'm good."

"You sure?"

"Yeah." She smiled again. "I'm sure."

"Well in that case..." Tails pondered out loud, with a knowing smirk. "I heard you went on another spree at the mall with Cream yesterday. Any chance you would like to tell me all about it?"

As if by magic, a gigantic grin plastered itself across Amy's face. She rubbed her hands giddily.

She had _so_ much to share.


End file.
